Wake by Robert J. Sawyer
(WWW volume one), Ace, $24.95, 356pp, hc, 9780441016792. Science fiction.
Emergent intelligences, the development of consciousness, the evolution of thinking machines into living machines, are all themes science fiction has explored as long as we’ve had the word computer, perhaps longer. Robert J. Sawyer returns to this old theme once again, but unlike many of his forebears, who have to deal with this new life from the outside (for example, Manny and Mike in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), Sawyer allows us to see the rising consciousness from the inside, and he does a pretty good job of it, too. In fact, in Wake (the first book in his WWW trilogy), we experience this emergence into the world of sensate intelligence several times, from different starting points.
As you might guess from the title, the one with the most Earth-shaking potential is the growth of an intelligence in the world wide web, unique and apart from the landscape we consider to be the web (all the web sites built by humans). But unlike a human baby, a computer-based child-intelligence will have access to far fewer forms of input or stimulation: no sight, no sound, no temperature, no touch, no taste, indeed, not much of anything. So what might stimulate such an agglomeration of facts to coalesce into an individual? Sawyer posits a temporary loss of part of itself, and the eventual re-fusion of the pieces, brought about by one of the few possible ways we can fragment the web: the imposition of the firewall around China.
At the same time, and more relatable to the average reader, we have sixteen-year-old Caitlin Decter. Blind since birth, and recently moved from Texas to Ontario, Caitlin’s blindness has a nearly unique pathology, one which attracts the attention of Japanese technologist Masayuki Kuroda. He’s got something that just might help Caitlin see: a way of interpreting the electromagnetic signals her eye “sees” and translating them for her optic nerve to send on to her brain. But he’ll need to network her artificial sense organ through the web to get the data flowing properly.
Ah, the web. Human vision transmitting through the web. But there’s an emergent intelligence lurking on the web. No, lurking implies something sinister. At the moment, this unknown intelligence is unaware that there is a greater world, one which would be terrifically interested in its existence. Completely unaware of anything outside the web (as a baby is unaware of things outside the womb), until it catches sight of Caitlin’s new sight.
And in the middle of it all (well, Japan, Ontario, and now California), there’s an ape. A lonely, intelligent chimpanzee hybrid who’s been taught sign language. While that’s almost commonplace these days, this particular ape, Hobo, is one day given a penpal. His humans set up a web-teleconference with another signing ape, and Hobo makes the connection that a two-dimensional representation of what has, thus far, always been a three-dimensional activity (signing) is possible. But then Hobo extrapolates. Not only does Hobo sign, he paints. And with this newfound concept—that he can reduce three-dimensional things to two-dimensional representations—he becomes the first ape to paint a picture of a person who isn’t standing in front of him. It’ll revolutionize the study of primates, it’ll revolutionize the study of thought… it’ll get out, and the zoo to which Hobo in fact belongs will demand his return (both for the money he can make and to sterilize him, because he’s a hybrid, and the eugenicists in Atlanta are demanding the bloodlines be kept pure). That whole subplot—a hybrid ape can’t be allowed to exist—was the only part of the book that really rang as unbelievable and authorially heavy-handed.
Anyway, Caitlin is not exactly suffering in her new environment. She’s a mathematical genius, incredibly easy-going, and she’s going to rock the world, one way or another. Sawyer may not be a teenager, but he’s obviously immersed himself in the modern teenager’s world (or at least the world teenagers want to be a part of), with blogs, instant messages, multitasking to a fare-thee-well, and the importance of whatever is
important to a teenager today. When Caitlin communicates, however, she communicates, it feels like a teenage girl, not like an adult male writer writing like a teenage girl. Sawyer’s also done his research with the blind community, and knows how a blind person will live and interact with the world; it all rings true. I’m impressed.
But back to the story, Caitlin travels to Japan, gets the implant implanted, and discovers… that she still can’t see. Well, she can see, but she can’t see the world we see. It turns out she’s “seeing” the web, sites and lines and splotches of data stretching to infinity. She’s a mathematical genius, remember, and while she’s learned to navigate the real world as best she can, she can navigate the web with an intuition that leaves the sighted people are her in the dust. So she’s watching the web, and back in Canada, and Kuroda has a breakthrough when she sees a flash of lightning. Her unit wasn’t transmitting the data properly. Let’s reprogram and OHMYGOD, I can see! The blind girl who can see is an overnight sensation, and Kuroda travels to Canada to work with her some more.
But as they’re working on her real world vision, Caitlin realizes she’s seen something extraordinary in the web no one has even imagined: that intelligence that’s just now forming. After a few scary thoughts of NSA and CIA, she decides it has to be kept a secret (even from Kuroda and her father, from whom she got the tools to realize it is an intelligence, and not just a random collection of data). She sets out teaching the web intelligence as Annie Sullivan taught Helen Keller. Of course, Caitlin’s student is a much faster learner than Helen could ever have been, with access to everything that’s on the web once she points it out.
Hobo learns to paint, Caitlin learns to see, and the web mind learns it is in individual, a being unto itself. Well, we’ve found a decent end-point… at least for the first book.
Sawyer’s story-telling style is almost invisible to the reader; he doesn’t get in the way of his own story, and writes short, punchy chapter that keep the reader saying “just one more”. (It’s the type of book I love when I’ve finished, but hate while I’m reading, because I can’t put it down.) His characters are fully realized, and I always finish his books wanting more. In this case, I’ll just have to wait for Watch, which is scheduled for 2010.